Southern California school districts to get pollution-free, electric buses

Share this:

The Electric Lion 360 made by the Quebec, Canada-base Lion Bus, school bus is one of the models of zero emission school buses that with a $8.8 million allocation from the South Coast Air Quality Management District. (Photo courtesy of the South Coast AQMD)

One day after President Donald Trump opted out of the Paris climate accord, Southern California air quality officials took a step in the opposite direction, approving $8.8 million for the purchase of 33 electric school buses.

The unanimous decision Friday, June 2, by the board of the South Coast Air Quality Management District was hailed as the largest electric school bus buy to date, said Evan Gillespie, head of the Sierra’s Club My Generation initiative.

It followed last month’s rollout of 29 electric school buses by air quality officials in Sacramento.

These buses are important for the future because they reduce children’s exposure to harmful emissions while also combating climate change at a time when national leadership on this issue is lacking, he said. They also could be a start of a zero-emission era.

“It is a great first step,” Gillespie said.

Funding for the buses as well as bus-charging stations will go to 16 school districts and two charter schools in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Each entity will get one or two buses with ranges of at least 60 miles per charge.

During the air district board meeting in Diamond Bar, 12-year-old Michael Beaudin of Fontana told the board that he was pleased to see that two electric buses would come to his hometown.

“The air is really, really smoggy, and we really need more electric buses,” said Michael, a student at Wayne Ruble Middle School.

The air district had received requests from 51 public school districts and 2 private charter schools for a total of 295 electric school buses.

Priority was given to school service areas with higher poverty and cancer rates, and elevated levels of fine particle air pollution, said an air district report.

David Danelski is an investigative and environmental reporter for The Press-Enterprise newspaper in Riverside, California. He has been with the newspaper since 1990 and has previously covered crime, transportation and city government. He is married to Lorrie Cobain, a teacher and staff development specialist for the Riverside Unified School District. The couple has one adult daughter, Rosemary. who lives in New York City.